Today's top Society news and comment
Bulger: Brown stands firm in battle with the tabloids
Hospital A/E changes risk excluding vulnerable people, says study
Huge rise in households with bin microchips
Martin Kettle: politicians must tell the truth about cuts to public services
Martin Brookes: in praise of bankers who donate their bonuses to charity
Other news
• A Tory government would give the private sector a bigger role in state education, the shadow school's secretary Michael Gove told the Financial Times.
• Up to half of England's child heart surgery units could close as a result of a national review aimed at improving surgical outcomes, the Times reports
• A charity has been set up to tackle the stereotyping of "Essex Girls," reports the Daily Telegraph. The chair of Essex Women's Advisory Group (EWAG), Elizabeth Hart, said prejudice against Essex girls was "almost racist."
On the blogs
• As expected, Stephen Bubb is furious at health secretary Andy Burnham's "gerrymandering" of the NHS Competition Commission's investigation into primary care trusts who exclude non-NHS organisations from tendering for NHS contracts (a saga I've blogged about previously). "A disgusting example of political manipulation," says Bubb. "Burnham was elected to a Government that had a firm Manifesto commitment 'to treat the third sector on equal terms'. He has shamelessly broken that manifesto pledge... This is a disgraceful example of how politicians talk big and then fail to deliver."
• How much will the Tories' proposed two year freeze on council tax cost? The calculations are incredibly complicated, and as the Insitute for Fiscal Studies, which has done them, points out, "you may be confused." What I think the IFS has concluded is that Labour can legitimately argue that the bill will be £1.4bn, while the Tories can equally argue the cost is very little because it will be offset by savings made in central government. Or something.
• Nick Hurd, the Tories spokesman on the voluntary sector, proved his bandwagon jumping prowess this week with a promise of "tax breaks to encourage social enterprise." But what kind of tax break, and who for, asks David Floyd on Beanbags and Bullsh!t . Floyd also takes issue with Hurd's obsession with creating a social enterprise investment bank, "an idea that seems likely to become a social enterprise equivalent of The Compact, a conference pleasing theoretical concept which fascinates umbrella bodies deeply but ultimately operates in a geostationary orbit above the people who are getting on with doing social change."
• Fighting Monsters has advice for prospective social work students on what to read in preparation for their University interview. Lots of topical stuff on Baby P and Khyra Ishaq, obviously (browse Society Guardian, it helpfully suggests) but also a novel, The Colour of Water by James McBride which while it does not reference social work directly gives insights into the heavy issues social workers will encounter. "A beautiful book in any context," FM concludes.
• Are we witnessing the birth of a "community empowerment industry"? Kevin Harris at Neighbourhoods muses on whether there are risks attached to the current political vogue for giving power back to communities and individuals (it's well worth following the links which track his thinking on this issue over the past few years). "Fifteen years ago we wouldn't have believed it [community empowerment] could happen, ten years ago we might have aspired towards it. Now empowerment is fashionable. I think there's an industry self-generating a lot of activity and I'm suspicious."
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